Tuesday, January 18, 2011

One of the reasons I want to try to keep up with my blog this year is to help make it easier to complete a "Project Life" album...similar to Project 365 (which is an album with a picture a day) but without the stress of having to take a picture a day. So, with that said, I thought I'd post about the events of the first two weeks of this year.

We started out 2011 celebrating the new year with a great group of friends at the Hyler's new house.

I finally got my christmas cards sent out on January 5th!

A new thing I did this year was to put all the photos we had gotten in Christmas cards on the back door leading out to the garage. I love being able to see all these smiling faces of friends and family every time we leave the house. I still have them all up...love it so much I don't want to take it down!

Here's Bella enjoying one of the blankets Tom and Cindi sent the kids for Christmas. Don't worry...the kids have enjoyed them too!

On January 8th the kids and I drove to Austin so we could watch Jordan's Blue Tide team mates swim at a swim meet at the University of Texas. Jordan was supposed to be swimming as well, but due to her injured back/kidney she wasn't able to swim. She was so dissapointed about not being able to swim that we decided to go anyway so she could watch. Jim didn't come with us because he had been out of town and didn't get home until about 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning and had to be on a flight back out on Sunday afternoon.Jordan took those pictures of us on the car ride. Jensen is comfy in the back with her new American Girl doll she got for Christmas and enjoying the new iPad. That thing is awesome! Judging by Jackson's hair he looks like he just woke up from a little nap. We were on the road pretty early and the kids all immediately fell asleep when we got in the car!

The natatorium at UT was pretty impressive. They have three 25 meter pools. They were running events in two of them simultaneously and using the third for warm up and warm down laps.

These are some of Jordan's swim buddies...Haley Harper and Chloe Hoover. We went to the team lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse on Saturday after the girls got done swimming.

No road trip would be complete without a stop at Bucees. We picked up a pound of beef jerky and some Beaver Nuggets and were back on the road to home as happy as could be!

Jim was on his way back to Toronto before we got home Sunday. Later in the week he emailed us this picture of what he was enduring way up north.

The week ended on a sad note. Jackson had a boy scout campout this past weekend and Jim went as well as a volunteer.

The campsite was not too far, only about an hour drive away. They left early Saturday morning, around 5:30 because the younger scouts had to go on a 5 mile hike as a requirement for their next rank advancement and the hike was to start at 7:00 a.m. I don't know if you can tell from the picture but it was rainy that morning and continued to rain and be miserable all weekend. One of the older scouts was to lead the boys on the hike. He was a junior in high school and driving himself to the campout when he lost control of his car and hit a fence. A board from the fence went through his windshield and killed him.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that boys' parents. They probably never dreamed as they were sending him off on a wholesome activity like a boy scout campout, that that would be the last time they would see him. I keep thinking if it had been me, I'd have been grateful that my child could drive himself up there while I stayed snuggled in my bed on an early, rainy saturday morning. Life as we know it could change at any instant.

Jim, Jordan, Jackson, Jensen I love each of you. I keep this blog for myself, but also for all of you so that if life as we know it ever changed you would know how much you mean to me.

Precisely why I had our ‘philanthropic + epiphany’ (= so much to give + vision): wanna see a perfectly cognizant, fully-spectacular, Son-ripened-Heaven?? … yet, I’m not sure if we're on the same page if you saw what I saw. Greetings, earthling. Because I was an actual NDE on the outskirts of the Great Beyond at 15 yet wasn’t allowed in, lemme share with you what I actually know Seventh-Heaven’s Big-Bang’s gonna be like: meet this advanced, bombastic, ex-mortal Upstairs for the most extra-groovy-paradox, pleasure-beyond-measure, Ultra-Yummy-Reality-Addiction in the Great Beyond for a BIG-ol, kick-ass, party-hardy, robust-N-risqué, eternal-wild-adventure you DO NOT wanna miss the sink-your-teeth-in-the-smmmokin’-hot-deal. Cya soon, girl…